Kenneth Harwood, PhD, PT, director of the Health Care Quality Program, research director for the Physical Therapy Program, and associate professor of clinical research and leadership at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, was a co-author on a paper that received the 2019 John M. Eisenberg Article-of-the-Year award from Health Services Research.
The paper, titled “Physical therapy as the first point of care to treat low back pain: An instrumental variables approach to estimate impact on opioid prescription, health care utilization and costs,” compared differences in opioid prescriptions, health care utilization, and costs among patients with low back pain who saw a physical therapist at the first point of care. The research team found there was lower utilization of high-cost medical services, as well as lower opioid use, when patients saw a physical therapist first.
The annual award was established in 2003 and recognizes excellent and original research among articles published in the Health Services Research journal. Awardees are selected by the co-editors-in-chief, the senior associate editors, and the publisher based on the overall quality of the article and its relevance to policy areas that Eisenberg worked in or promoted during his tenure as director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
